--:-- Mark Garrison: Good morning. It's Tuesday, January 9th. I'm Mark Garrison. This is Apple News Today.
--:-- Mark Garrison: On today's show, the U.S. tries to prevent the war in Gaza from spreading, problems with the Michigan law to help wrongfully convicted people, and a night vision camera reveals a strange little housekeeper.
--:-- Mark Garrison: First to the Middle East, where U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken is meeting with regional leaders trying to contain the war in Gaza. This is a moment of profound tension in the region. It's a conflict that could easily metastasize, causing even more insecurity and even more suffering.
--:-- Mark Garrison: A major potential flashpoint is the border with Lebanon. The Iran-backed Hezbollah is in control of the area near Israel. Hezbollah and Israeli forces have exchanged fire nearly every day since the Gaza war began. But lately, there are signs that conflict could get more intense.
--:-- Mark Garrison: Yesterday, an Israeli airstrike killed an elite Hezbollah commander. And Israel is widely seen as behind the attack that killed a top Hamas leader in Beirut last week. In recent weeks, Hezbollah fighters, Israeli soldiers, and many Israeli and Lebanese civilians have been killed.
--:-- Mark Garrison: The Washington Post reports on how the U.S. is trying to convince Israel not to escalate in Lebanon. A new secret intelligence assessment warns that this would be a much harder fight for Israel than Gaza. Hezbollah has a much stronger military than Hamas in Gaza.
--:-- Mark Garrison: If Israel launches a bombing campaign in Lebanon, their pilots could be in much more danger of being shot down. U.S. assessment is that Israel's forces would be stretched too thin if they try to fight a war in Gaza and Lebanon at the same time.
--:-- Mark Garrison: Lebanon's Foreign Minister Abdel Abou Habib talked to CNN last week about the need to avoid a broader conflict. We don't want any escalation in the war. We don't want what's happening in the South to be spread over Lebanon.
--:-- Mark Garrison: We don't like a regional war because it's dangerous to everybody. Dangerous to Lebanon, dangerous to Israel, and to the countries surrounding Israel. But in southern Lebanon, Hezbollah is in power, so the central government doesn't have total influence over the situation.
--:-- Mark Garrison: But Bouhabib says it encouraging Hezbollah to lower tensions. You know the decision is theirs and we hope that they don't commit themselves to a larger war. But we're working with them on this and we have a lot of reasons to think that this would not happen.
--:-- Mark Garrison: Earlier, the Post spoke to Biden administration officials who worry that Netanyahu may be motivated to expand the war to Lebanon as he fights for his own political survival at home.
--:-- Mark Garrison: Now let's take a quick look at some other major stories in the news. Federal investigators say they're looking into whether missing bolts are the reason a large panel came off an Alaska Airlines flight, forcing it to make an emergency landing.
--:-- Mark Garrison: They say they still haven't found four key bolts that should have been on the Boeing 737 MAX 9 jet. And it's possible they were never correctly installed in the first place.
--:-- Mark Garrison: This comes as United and Alaska Airlines say they found loose parts when inspecting multiple grounded planes. A company called Spirit Aerosystems was responsible for installing the panel. It and Boeing are also investigating what happened.
--:-- Mark Garrison: In legal news today, a federal appeals court will hear former President Trump's argument that he's immune from prosecution for his actions leading up to the attack on the Capitol because he was president at the time.
--:-- Mark Garrison: Trump is expected to be there. The court is fast-tracking the case, so a ruling could come quickly, and an appeal to the Supreme Court is likely to follow.
--:-- Mark Garrison: Trump's legal team is making a similar argument to get election interference charges in Georgia dismissed. And in the world of sports, there's a new college football champion.
--:-- Mark Garrison: Hail, hail Michigan. They are the champions of college football 2023. Michigan beat Washington 34-13 last night. It's the team's first national championship since 1997.
--:-- Mark Garrison: The Wolverines' strong run game helped seal the victory. It caps a year that was filled with drama, including a three-game suspension of coach Jim Harbaugh because of a sign-stealing scandal.
--:-- Mark Garrison: You can find more sports coverage in the Apple News app. Now to a story about people who fought for years to prove their convictions were wrongful.
--:-- Mark Garrison: But after getting out of prison they faced yet another battle. Authorities were making it hard for them to get compensated for years behind bars for crimes they didn't commit.
--:-- Mark Garrison: In Michigan, wrongfully convicted people are eligible for $50,000 in compensation for each year of incarceration. New reporting from ProPublica finds that narrow criteria and confusing language makes it extremely difficult for many people to get the money.
--:-- Mark Garrison: ProPublica's Anna Clark told us about why the state set up the compensation program in the first place. The intention behind this is to provide some support for people who are rebuilding their lives after experiencing grave injustice to try to reckon somewhat for that.
--:-- Mark Garrison: But for Marvin Cotton Jr., the law didn't provide that support. Cotton spent almost two decades in prison on a murder conviction. The prosecutor's office ordered his release after finding his trial was unfair with police misconduct.
--:-- Mark Garrison: Even though his name was cleared, Cotton found it hard to find a job in stable housing. He believed he was eligible for close to a million dollars in compensation, but his compensation claim was challenged by the state.
--:-- Mark Garrison: You only qualify if your conviction was overturned based on, quote, new evidence. And that new evidence must meet a very high, clear and convincing standard.
--:-- Mark Garrison: If the courts didn't like literally decide it based on that new evidence, if they decided it based on trial errors or lawyer issues or something like that, even if new evidence was also on the table, then those folks end up getting shut out.
--:-- Mark Garrison: They get nothing. That's what happened in Cotton's case. The attorney general's office said that new evidence had not emerged to clear him of the crime, and therefore he did not qualify for compensation.
--:-- Mark Garrison: Experts agree that wrongfully convicted people are entitled to financial help, but there's no uniform standard for how governments should compensate them.
--:-- Mark Garrison: Michigan has the fifth most exonerations in the U.S. Close to 70% of people who filed claims have been paid, But for the many people left out, like Cotton, it's a painful process.
--:-- Mark Garrison: Now that we've seen it in action, now that we've seen how it's been affecting real people's lives, there have been some lawmakers some advocates and even some state Supreme Court justices that have been urging the legislature to take this up again to reconsider the language.
--:-- Mark Garrison: You know, just account for how it's been excluding a lot of people that it was meant to help. Cotton kept arguing his claim, and ultimately the state offered to settle his case for about $630,000.
--:-- Mark Garrison: Cotton felt he had a good case for more, but he told ProPublica he was tired of fighting, that more years of litigation could rip his life apart.
--:-- Mark Garrison: Finally, a story of an intruder who leaves the place cleaner than it was before. In Wales, a man was trying to figure out who was going inside his shed every night.
--:-- Mark Garrison: The weird thing was the mystery guest was doing a great job of keeping the place organized. Night after night, things the owner left out, screwdrivers, nuts, bolts, clothespins, they were neatly placed in a box by the morning.
--:-- Mark Garrison: So the owner of the shed installed a camera to find out what was going on while he was sleeping. And there, caught on tape, was a tiny mouse scurrying around, grabbing whatever was laying around, and using its paws and mouth to neatly pile the junk in place.
--:-- Mark Garrison: The night vision footage of the mouse is now being shared around the world. The Guardian checked in with some scientists to find out what was behind all the mouse keeping.
--:-- Mark Garrison: They're not sure exactly what's going on. Mice build nests for warmth, and these were chilly nights. But what's weird is the mouse is grabbing mostly hard objects, not the soft things that make for a good warm nest.
--:-- Mark Garrison: This may be more of the foraging and hoarding behavior sometimes seen in the wild. Think of pack rats who are known to bundle up shiny objects like keys, jewelry, and bottle caps.
--:-- Mark Garrison: What is clear to one mouse researcher, the critter seems to be having a blast, or else it wouldn't keep at it. Mice may be a little bit like humans, in that sometimes doing something pointless is pretty fun.
--:-- Mark Garrison: You can find all these stories and more in the Apple News app. And if you're already listening in the News app right now, stick around.
--:-- Mark Garrison: We've got a narrated article coming up next. Rolling Stone has the story of an FBI agent who spent two decades going undercover to stop human trafficking.
--:-- Mark Garrison: Now she's talking about what she witnessed. If you're listening in the Podcasts app, follow Apple News Plus Narrated to find that story, and I'll be back with the news tomorrow.
